Fashion often operates like a seesaw, swinging between opposite extremes. This results in seemingly abrupt transitions: from the mini to the midi; the opulent to the minimal. Episode two of our In Vogue: The 1990s podcast moves on from the supermodels—who epitomized the height of glamour—to the seemingly anti-fashion movement, grunge.
Grunge fashion takes its name and style cues from a rebellious alternative music scene from Seattle, a cold, rainy city far distant from fashion’s four compass points. The sound was loud; the look secondhand plaid flannel, homey denim, thermals, and Dr. Martens; and the vibe was slept-in. The poster children of the movement were Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain and his wife, Courtney Love, of Hole.
By 1992 grunge was recognizable enough to be fictionalized in Cameron Crowe’s movie Singles, and, depending on your point of view, either co-opted or iterated on by fashion. Three grunge-inspired shows were presented during the spring 1993 collections in New York, but it was Marc Jacobs’s timely, young, and unscrubbed collection for Perry Ellis that caused the most stir and eventually cost Jacobs his job. Critics went into conniptions over clothes that to some seemed to be a send-up of fashion itself. The Seattle scenesters were also appalled. Love said she had burned pieces from the Perry Ellis lineup that she’d received. “When grunge hit the runways,” says Megan Jasper, who was then working at Sub Pop Records, “first off it seemed bizarre that people were willing to pay that kind of money for something you could buy for $5 at the thrift store down the street.”
Nirvana’s 1992 song “Come as You Are” became the grunge motto. The face that was most associated with this new nonconformist ideal of beauty belonged to Kate Moss, a small-framed, seemingly vulnerable Brit, who represented “reality” and ushered in what became known as the era of the waif.
“Where America was making the music of that moment,” notes Vogue editor Camilla Nickerson, “you had these young photographers in England photographing their girlfriends or the girl down the street who wasn’t a supermodel, dressing them in clothes they’d found in thrift shores, photographing them in their bedsits [apartments]. [They] were creating the visuals that sort of summon that [grunge] spirit.”
Grunge not only celebrated individuality and imperfection, it linked those values with authenticity. Grunge was a kind of DIY fashion that trickled up from the streets of Seattle to Seventh Avenue and beyond, and its visual cues have become part of the language of fashion. More important—and enduring—is grunge’s philosophy of acceptance, DIY, eclecticism, comfort, and self-expression, which continue to inform how we see fashion today.
Learn more about grunge and how it changed the fashion landscape today on In Vogue: The 1990s. Joining Vogue’s editorial team, Hamish Bowles, Nicole Phelps, Mark Holgate, and Laird Borrelli-Persson, in “Episode 2: Grunge Strikes Back” are, in order: designer Marc Jacobs, fashion critic Cathy Horyn, fashion historian Kimberly M. Jenkins, music executive Megan Jasper, musician Kim Gordon, Vogue contributing editor Camilla Nickerson, Vogue sustainability editor Tonne Goodman, designer Anna Sui, and Vogue editor Grace Coddington.
In Vogue: The 1990s airs Thursdays from September 17. Listen to it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google, or wherever you get your podcasts. The LEGO Group is a launch sponsor.
Listen to “Episode 1: The Rise of the Supermodel,” here.
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